Sweetfern, Comptonia peregrina, is neither sweet nor a fern, but is one of my favorite plants. It looks like something the dinosaurs would have walked through, and smells like all the warmest, spiciest, most magical aromas of imagination.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Thanks to the suggestion of the very kind and talented Jean Stevens of Somerset, England, I have selected the manufacturer (Stillman & Birn), and have now narrowed my choice down to two sizes of spiral-bound sketchbooks: 7x7" or 10x7".

(I used to draw when I was little, but that was a looooong time ago. If I was a good "draw-er" I probably would not have become a photographer.)

I "met" Jean earlier this year on twitter, where she is @JeanStevens4. Jean is an artist and a printmaker, and she was posting progress shots of a woodcut. Since woodcut/linocut is one of my all-time favorite art forms, I found her work immediately captivating. Plants. Animals. Birds. Landscapes. Seascapes. All: Wow.

Apparently last year Jean started a lovely little twitter thing, called DrawingAugust. People signed up, and drew (or painted, or whatever) something each day, and posted a picture of it with the hashtag #DrawingAugust. No pressure, no competition, no judgments; just a collective spirit of encouragement and an incentive to create something every day for the month of August. When Jean invited the world at large to participate this year, I looked back at some of the work that was posted last year, felt a little flicker of excitement, and thought, "Why not?"

(Perhaps I should provide the context: this was around the time my camera had been in the shop for three years weeks.)

I'm mentioning this here because I know some of my readers are artists, and I imagine many of my readers are non-draw-ers like myself, who are nonetheless a little excited by the idea of exploring a creative path just for the fun of it. And sharing the results with others because that's fun, too.

It’s the same as last year. For the month of August, you try your hardest to produce a drawing/sketch every day and post it on Twitter with the # (hashtag) #DrawingAugust. By using the hashtag, people can easily find your drawing and keep supporting each other throughout the month with comments, retweets, favourites etc. The whole aim is to get people drawing. There’s no preset skill level required, it really is a supportive community that wants to encourage others to pick up a pencil, or whatever medium you wish to draw with, and get drawing.

~~~

What do you say?

Sounds like fun?

If you are interested, just contact Jean on twitter - or on her blogpost linked above - so she can add your name to the list of participants. The last count was 85, and many have mentioned what good fun it was last year.

Dear readers...

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